The Difference Between Stable and Unstable Relationships

Advanced love advice in ten easy steps

You both see forest and trees: For every topic there’s a conversation to be had within it or about it. For example, sometimes you and your partner disagree within a particular topic, and then zoom out to “talk process” about your disagreement. We all have the capacity to zoom into the tree details and out to the forest big picture. You behave within your habits but you also have habits of thinking about those habits.

There aren’t just those two levels: …and your habits of thinking about your habit of thinking about yours habits, like when one of you says “I think we process too much.” Life would be simpler if there were just two levels-- just the details and the big picture. But of course it’s not like that. The trees aren’t the lowest details and the forest isn’t the biggest picture. For example, you can be defensive, but you can also be defensive about accusations that you are being defensive, and then defensive about accusations that you’re being defensive about being defensive. These infinite levels of analysis would by comical if they weren’t also frustrating. So what’s the right level of analysis?

There’s no one right level: There’s plenty level-chauvinism in the air: “Focus on the details, don’t generalize!” “Focus on the big picture, don’t nit pick!” We praise people for being detail oriented or conversely, big picture thinkers. We criticize people for being micro-managers or conversely, having their heads in the clouds. We dismiss people as “not seeing the whole picture” and flatter ourselves by thinking we do. In fact, none of us see the whole picture and anyway, the bigger picture isn’t always better. Nor are the details. Sometimes a detail makes a big difference; sometimes the details distract from the big pattern that makes a big difference. There is no general rule about what’s the best level of analysis.

People’s attention gravitates to the levels that feel most fruitful, and away from the levels that feel less fruitful: Fruitful, however doesn’t just mean productive in solving real problems. We may claim we’re paying attention to the levels of analysis that matter but sometimes we just pay attention to comfort-zone levels and avoid discomfort-zone levels.

You and your partner both have your “go there” and “don’t go there” zones: None of us are comfortable visiting every level of analysis. We all intuit the right and wrong levels to focus on, and we also gut-cling to comfort zone-levels and avoid discomfort-zone levels.

You have compatibility in your go and don’t go there’s: Partnerships are strengthened by their common intuitions about the right levels to attend to and ignore. Novelist Edith Wharton says: “The real marriageof true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humoror irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances at any subject cross like inter-arching search-lights." Keys here can be thought of as levels, as when you and your partner see someone do something quirky and smile at each other as if to say, “there he goes again,” focusing intuitively together on the general habit.

You will have incompatibilities in your go and don’t go there’s: No matter how compatible you are, sometimes you’re intuitions will steer you toward different keys or levels. Compatibility in how you negotiate these incompatibilities is crucial to your success.

The three lubes of good relationships: Your partnership’s sustainability depends on 1) Your levels-compatibility, 2) Your compatibility in negotiating the incompatibilities, and 3) Your ability to give each other space to attend to your preferred levels independently.

Humor helps: Levels are comical even though they are frustrating. Lubricate your levels-negotiation with irony and self-effacing irony. (See irony as love lube)

It’s harder to negotiate incompatibilities with someone who doesn’t understand 1-9: Such people are more likely to pull rank, declaring with absolute authority that your level preference is inappropriate, immoral or wrong. These are the kind who are defensive about their defensiveness about their defensiveness, and with them there’s no negotiating levels.

Sorry if my article was confusing or vague. I may have been trying to say too much in too few words. Try this: We all know that people can disagree about what's significant, and can get on their high horse about it, like they know for sure what's significant and insignificant. That high horse business is hard on any relationship but especially romantic ones, since it's hard to keep the love light burning for someone who thinks you're a total idiot for thinking something is important that they don't. Contempt is the kiss of death in partnership.

I was tying that idea together with another one which is about how it's not just what we think is significant, but the scale of analysis, like google maps zooming in to details and zooming out to the big picture. For example if one partner says "You pick on every little detail about me." and the other says "You make these sweeping generalizations."

The problem with getting on our high horses as though we know what's important and what isn't is that significance isn't the only reason we want to focus on one thing over another. Often we prefer to focus on stuff in our comfort zone. We zoom into a detail to avoid some scary thought about the big picture, or we zoom out to the big picture so we don't have to look at some inconvenient detail. So saying "you're an idiot for wanting to focus on that." is often just an insulting way of saying "please don't make me look at what I'm trying to ignore.

And I'm saying relationships do better when you understand these points I've made here.

Fair enough. It's a percentage game, both in the writing and the reading. Another reader said this was very useful, but I lord knows of the 600 articles I've written there are bound to be some turkeys.

Still, I don't think I describe overthinking at length in this article. I hardly mentioned it. My concern here was more actually with underthinking which would motivate contempt. After all if you think people are stupid for disagreeing with you, you hardly feel the need to justify your beliefs. You can just say "it's insignificant because it is, and anyone who disagrees about that is a douche."

I hope you'll give other articles of mine a try in the future. Maybe I've lost my touch or maybe it's just the occasional turkey.